A classic is put to the test

Laurel Maury, Special to The Chronicle

Published
4:00 am PST, Wednesday, November 1, 2006

NEW YORK - OCTOBER 23, 2006: Suzen O'Rourke (L) and Tom Gelinne test a baby back rib recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook on October 23, 2006 in New York City. The ribs are coated with barbecue sauce. (Photograph by Michael Nagle for The San Francisco Chronicle) less

NEW YORK - OCTOBER 23, 2006: Suzen O'Rourke (L) and Tom Gelinne test a baby back rib recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook on October 23, 2006 in New York City. The ribs are coated with barbecue sauce. ... more

Photo: Michael Nagle

Photo: Michael Nagle

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NEW YORK - OCTOBER 23, 2006: Suzen O'Rourke (L) and Tom Gelinne test a baby back rib recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook on October 23, 2006 in New York City. The ribs are coated with barbecue sauce. (Photograph by Michael Nagle for The San Francisco Chronicle) less

NEW YORK - OCTOBER 23, 2006: Suzen O'Rourke (L) and Tom Gelinne test a baby back rib recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook on October 23, 2006 in New York City. The ribs are coated with barbecue sauce. ... more

Photo: Michael Nagle

A classic is put to the test

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2006-11-01 04:00:00 PDT New York -- It sat on my parents' brown bookcase, a tattered lump, cover gone, smelling like scrambled eggs and cinnamon. Whenever any one of us wanted to cook something, but didn't know how, Mom would say, "Go look in 'Joy.' "

"Joy of Cooking" was as much standard equipment in our house as Webster's Dictionary.

Now I'll have a new version to cook with. The 75th anniversary edition, by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker, comes out this week. The only cookbook chosen by the New York Public Library as one of the 150 most influential books of the 20th century, it's sold more than 14 million copies. The wartime edition, which was published in 1943, was Julia Child's first cookbook, but the 1975 edition is considered the classic.

" 'Joy' lets you cook with ingredients that any American can find in a standard grocery store," says Suzen O'Rourke, director of the "Joy of Cooking" test kitchen. "It's not supposed to be gourmet."

Recipes for the new edition were tested all over the country, but more than 3,000 of the 4,500 recipes were tested in the main test kitchen in Tribeca in New York. Chefs, usually five at a time, and a part-time sommelier rotated in and out, cooking up to 15 recipes a day for two years.

The four ovens, two floor-to-ceiling refrigerators, three stoves, and many cabinets and drawers, some of which are refrigerated, are situated on and around a huge island in the middle of a room of about 900 square feet. The spotless floors are haunted by Audry, O'Rourke's white cat.

Each recipe was tested once, but occasionally testers went further. They made four versions of Chocolate Cake, for example, but ended up with Irma Rombauer's 1931 version, which they found, surprisingly, was light enough for modern tastes. "But we left out the nuts because we thought they might sink," says O'Rourke.

Some of the older images from "Joy" are back. Instructions for preparing squirrel and possum, omitted in the 1997 edition, have returned. So has Braised Bear, which is now joined by two recipes for Buffalo, including one by Ethan Becker, Irma's grandson.

Yet, in its own way, "Joy" has a special affinity for the wide variety of culinary influences that characterize Northern California kitchens. Chinese, Japanese and Mexican ingredients are described with the same care as broccoli and beans. Cactus pads, cardoons and jicama take their place alongside carrots and cauliflower.

"Joy" has always been a multicultural book. Irma S. Rombauer's hometown of St. Louis was nearly one-third foreign-born when she was a child. It was probably normal to her not to divide recipes by origin. Crepes, blinis, griddle cakes -- they were all just pancakes. But this blending of cultures had never been done before this German-American housewife started collecting recipes from her friends.

She was thrifty, and her early recipes called for cheap cuts of meat. But she knew where not to cut corners. "If your scraps are insufficient, buy a soup bone."

The result was one of the great self-help books of the 20th century, reinforced in the new edition with a section on nutrition, written in consultation with Dr. Walter Willett, nutritionist and epidemiologist at Harvard School of Public Health. "You really need a mix of vegetable oils in your diet," says Willett. He also advocates corn, canola and walnut oil.

Other fats have also been rehabilitated. "Coconut oil, that's fine in moderation," says Willett, whose main concern is trans fat, which has been linked to heart disease and cancer.

Under Willett's influence, the new book emphasizes portion size, but the editors who worked on "Joy" seem to have personally ignored this advice. Head editor Beth Wareham put on 11 pounds.

"I'm 46 years old," she says. "I have no idea how I'm going to take this off."